‘Carte Blanche’ — the phrase in French (blank slate, blank piece of paper).
Why is carte blanche so beautiful? When things are new, clean, pure, and un-tainted … then you can truly re-challenge yourself, re-innovate, and re-create yourself and the future (and past!)
Children as carte blanche
For example, my son. He is a blank slate. He has no notions of … anything. Sure he has certain instincts (he knows how to suck and feed/eat, he knows when to cry when he is hungry or needs something, and he learns to mimic and recognize faces). But beyond this, he has no mimetic desires, or any notions of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ (from a moralistic and ethical perspective), and he doesn’t know any brands, or cares for societal desires x, y, z. Watching him grow up is the most beautiful and pure thing I have witnessed in my life thus far (in praise of having children).
Carte-blanche with technology
Something I learned from my experiences in IT and as a kid growing up (hacker ethos) is this:
Do not restore simply from a backup. Rather, when you get a new laptop, tablet, phone, etc … start it carte blanche, and re-figure out whether what you already got is essential or not.
While it may seem like a pain, I actually see it as a great joy. By re-starting things and reformatting things carte blanche (can be applied to life, lifestyle, your philosophies and perspectives etc) — you can filter through doing. You figure out what you really need and desire, and what is just ‘legacy’ bloatware which can hold you down and back.
This is why living semi-nomadically and why traveling and moving to new homes, new apartments, new cities, etc is useful — with every new move, you gotta get rid of superfluous things, and what you decide to keep … this is what you truly care for!
Carte blanche design
Even with this blog … I am always uninstalling themes/plugins/widgets/menus and re-installing and re-adding them. Why? Through this continual process of subtracting (then addition), every single iteration I strive to make this blog ‘better’!